Arts
Her art of veiled threats
by Anthony Byrt
11 COLOUR PLATES, by Yvonne Todd, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland (to May 29).
It might seem hasty to say that Yvonne Todd is the best New Zealand artist of her generation. It will probably send certain other critics into indignant spasms. But, at 31, Todd has built up a potent contribution to New Zealand art that deserves as much attention and praise as can be flung at it.
One of the things I think justifies the statement is that Todd is part of a group of photographers collectively making some seriously good, tough art. Others of note include Fiona Amundsen, David Bennewith, Gavin Hipkins, Ann Shelton and Shigeru Takato. Several critics and curators are starting to switch on to the quality of their work, and former Adam Art Gallery curator Zara Stanhope deserves particular mention for Slow Release (2003), an exhibition that very intelligently brought together several of these younger artists with senior photographers, including Peter Peryer and Anne Noble.
For me, though, Todd is the standout figure. The seemingly inaccurate title of her 10 new photographs at Auckland’s Ivan Anthony Gallery – 11 Colour Plates – results from the need for each of her series to have a five- or six-syllable name. So, 10 Colour Plates wouldn’t have worked. She is also suspicious of the number 10. Fair enough.
Although each photo has a story – most too strange to explain here – there’s no single theme driving the show. However, they are all typical Todd images. There are several portraits, all laced with her strange femininity, her faux-Gothic sensibility. But this time she hasn’t limited herself to portraiture, and 11 Colour Plates is possibly her most eclectic and self-aware collection to date.
Last year, William McAloon reviewed Todd’s The Book of Martha for the Listener, his piece illustrated by her self-portrait as an anorexic. There’s a similar photo in this show, even more disturbing than that earlier one. In this latest version, “Resulta”, she’s gaunter, more wasted. A horrifying work, it says a lot about her self-performance, her theatrical vulnerability. It is significant, then, that “Rasputa” is included, too – a decade-old self-portrait as (in Todd’s words) “a Soviet tractor whore”.
Her new studio portraits are remarkable. In “Bo-Drene”, a pregnant teenager poses awkwardly, dripping dowdy sexiness; a sweet young thing any Mormon polygamist would be proud to call his own. “Fractoid” is similarly freaky. A woman on crutches wears a neatly pressed pink dress, her face in shadow. There’s no obvious explanation for the crutches, and the outfit and lighting give her a looming presence. She becomes bizarrely contradictory and threatening. And then there is “Roba”, who looks like a nightmare cross between Nana Mouskouri and high-school misfit Carrie.
The portraits display Todd’s most unsettling gift – her ability to synthesise
disparate ideas into compelling, weird images. Other photos in the series do this, too. In “Homage to Dr Spackman” black candles stand on a mirror alongside a solitary diet pill. In “Seriousness” a servicemen’s cemetery is stripped of all detail but for a motley line of cypress trees.
Do her photographs come from some deep, dark place – or are they
total farce? The likelihood is neither, but also both. And, as a viewer, it’s okay
to be ambivalent about this, even suspicious – provided you accept that the work is brilliant as your default starting point.
So, what to make of 11 Colour Plates? Maybe it’s a kind of self-curated mini-retrospective, an anti-narrative project incorporating all the things that we have learnt about her so far: suburbia, studio portraiture, Gothic lighting, scary women, false landscapes, cemeteries, performance, self-annihilation. To be honest, I don’t know. Make up your own minds. But whatever you decide, please don’t call it “white trash”.
Wellington audiences will see some of 11 Colour Plates in Prospect 2004. The truth is, Yvonne Todd is a long way past being a prospect.
